Juan Mercado
Inquirer columns elicit comments worldwide. Here are samples from professors abroad to Ilocos Sur students. On the Internet, the opinion pieces spur heated debates. Excerpts:
“Prof. Paul Stephen Lim, sent me Viewpoint’s ‘Payback,’” e-mailed University of Kansas Prof. Emeritus Grant Goodman. This recalled president Manuel Quezon’s offer of sanctuary to Jews fleeing from Nazis.
Today, places and streets bear Quezon’s name. But “the man and his accomplishments are unfamiliar to most Filipinos.” This is disheartening to one (who) spent an academic lifetime working on the Commonwealth period.
“My research began in 1959 when I worked on the deteriorating Quezon papers in a rat-infested warehouse on Arlegui Street. No one else showed up to do research. Those were the days before Xerox. I hired a typist to copy the documents word for word. Because of my advanced age, I have donated all of my Quezoniana to the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.”
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From Sinait National High School in Ilocos Sur, students Geriennezana Garcia, Precious Azcueta, Louise Tagavilla and Vanessa Yadao e-mailed: “Our teacher Romelinda de Guzman asked us to react to a newspaper article as part of our fourth grading period project. We chose the Viewpont column entitled ‘Relentless Surge.’”
It showed the connection between pork barrels and the Pine Island Glacier on Antarctica, now rapidly melting. The column pinpointed links to climate change and increasingly severe storms even in once typhoon-free regions here.
“The ten-billion pork-barrel spent on bogus nongovernmental organizations is enough to fund the disaster preparedness.” Resources for essential projects vanished “into thin air.” We definitely agree with the last sentence of Viewpoint: “As Revilla and Co. defend themselves in the pork barrel scam, sea levels fed by Pine Island Glaciers’ meltdown surge relentlessly.”
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“Whistle-blower’s Vindication” dealt with Inquirer’s selection of six whistle-blowers as the collective “Filipino of the Year” 2013. Three days after the announcement, they linked former senator Ramon Revilla Sr. to the widespread pork barrel scam. That drew spirited comment.
“The American ‘Deep Throat’ (Mark Felt of the Federal Bureau of Investigation) sent to jail five White House officials. And it caused US president Richard Nixon to resign,” Tarkin e-mailed. The Filipino “Deep Throat”—the late Rep. Romeo Candazo —first exposed the scam in 1996. Yet, no one has been jailed—so far. In fact, the Countryside Development Fund scam grew exponentially into the Priority Development Assistance Fund up to 2013. That’s the glaring difference between American and Philippine justice.”
“If People Power worked to unseat Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada, why not the thieves in Congress and the Senate,” e-mailed Eman. “Let’s do it again in Edsa. Now na. Because
“Edsa was a fake revolution”, claimed Mariano Renato Pacifico.
“Hello, Marcos. Are you still alive? You were supposed to be dead,” Eman snapped back. And Boldyak added: “If Edsa was fake, then the overthrow of Marcos was fake? All this time, we’ve had fake governments? All elections held after the EDSA 1 were fake? Hahaha. Where have you been all these times? OMG.” “Get a seeing eye dog,” suggested John Kruz. “They say it helps those who are also afflicted with a mental disorder.” “Nice one!” Spartan Akon Ismagul wrote to John_kruz.
“What part of my comment made you think (sic) I have mental disorder?” responded Mariano Renato Pacifico. “Or Filipinos find logic mental disorder (sic). That is why they have faulty decisions on whom to put in public office that is dogging them yesterday, now and forever will be. You Filipinos are totally sick.”
Basta. That gives a flavor of the brawl on the Internet. Here are some of the more relevant comments. Aldous Huxley was not a scientist. He was a fiction and nonfiction writer well-known for his novels like Brave New World, Jun F. Teoxon points out. “Was Benhur Luy’s claim that Misamis Oriential has a municipality of Clarin a typographical error?” Virgo Yap asked. There is a Clarin town. But it is in Misamis Occidental.
“I remember watching Clarissa Ocampo disputing that “(Jose Velarde) signature during the televised proceedings, and thought it was incredibly brave of her,” Walter Paul Komarnicki recalls. “But it took people power to get things moving at the end of all those proceedings.”
Eirons 1043 agreed. Expect the cases against “Tanda”, “Seksi” plus “Pogi” and other PDAF cases to be forgotten by Jan. 1, 2016. That’s when election fever sets in. President Benigno Aquino III may become like his mother: very honest but clueless.
“Cruel,” said the 83-year-old former First Lady and Ilocos Norte representative Imelda Marcos. “Did Imelda mean the US Federal Court (9th Circuit) who whacked her and Ferdinand Jr. (Bongbong) with a $353.6 million fine,” asked Manuel de la Torre, a University of the Philippines graduate now resident of Idaho. They tried to secretly ship out of the United States paintings and other artworks from court-contested holdings for a 25-percent, tax-free share. “Or was it belated Marcos contrition martial law salvaging?”
No. She meant the court-ordered detention of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center. “She is visited only by her husband, her children, from noon to 9 p.m. Then she has no one. So cruel. So unjust. Not human. I am sorry, so sad to be there.”
Did Imelda tell that to the 7,526 victims of martial law abuses across town? They just got a second tranche check, from the US. A $2 billion judgment awarded by a US district court in Hawaii in 1995 to “New Society” victims. Silly question.